House Judiciary Committee: Obama Fudging Deportation Numbers

The Obama administration is fudging the numbers in claims it is deporting “record” numbers of illegal aliens, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee reported last week.

The committee, led by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas, pictured), accused the administration of inflating the numbers by including illegal aliens apprehended at the border in the total of those deported.

Observers have noted the oddity of the president touting his administration's deportations, given that his immigration deputies have flatly stated that they will not deport illegal immigrants who meet the criteria of the failed DREAM Act, a position Obama himself made official in June, when he announced that young illegals were free to stay in the country.

The Numbers

The committee put the numbers together with documents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They “show that the Obama administration is cooking the books to achieve their so-called ‘record’ deportation numbers for illegal immigrants and that removals are actually significantly down — not up — from 2009,” the committee reported in a release.

Obama began cooking the books last year, the committee reported:

Beginning in 2011, the Committee has learned that Obama administration officials at the Department of Homeland Security started to include numbers from the Alien Transfer Exit Program (ATEP) in its year-end removal numbers.

The ATEP is a joint effort between ICE and Customs and Border Protection that transfers illegal immigrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border to another point along the Southwest border for removal. But it is illegitimate to count illegal immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol along the Southwest border as ICE removals. There are no penalties or bars attached when illegal immigrants are sent back via ATEP and they can simply attempt re-entry.

Pulling out the ATEP numbers dramatically changes the number of deportations under Obama. The numbers for 2012 are nearly 20 percent below those in 2009. The committee continued,

When ATEP removals are subtracted from ICE’s deportation numbers, the 2011 removal total would drop from approximately 397,000 to roughly 360,000 and the 2012 removal total would drop from about 334,000 to around 263,000 (annualized this is estimated to be a drop from about 400,000 to 315,000).

This means that ICE removals for this year will be about 14% below 2008 (369,000) and 19% below 2009 (389,000).

The internal documents also reveal a discrepancy between arrests and actual removals. Specifically, ICE has reported 221,656 arrests yet report 334,249 removals for 2012 so far — a discrepancy of nearly 112,000 removals. ATEP accounts for 72,030 removals within this discrepancy, but there are over 40,000 removals that remain unaccounted for.

Rep. Smith isn’t happy about the administration's inflation of the deportation numbers. He stated:

Internal Department of Homeland Security documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee reveal that President Obama and other administration officials have falsified their record to achieve their so-called historic deportation numbers.

Administration officials claim that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has deported a record number of illegal immigrants but the facts show that they have fabricated their deportation statistics by illegitimately adding over 100,000 removals to their deportation figures for the past two years.

Since 2011, the Obama administration has included numbers from a Border Patrol program that returns illegal immigrants to Mexico right after they cross the Southwest border in their year-end deportation statistics. It is dishonest to count illegal immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol along the border as ICE removals. And these "removals" from the Border Patrol program do not subject the illegal immigrant to any penalties or bars for returning to the U.S. This means a single illegal immigrant can show up at the border and be removed numerous times in a single year — and counted each time as a removal. When the numbers from this Border Patrol program are removed from this year’s deportation data, it shows that removals are actually down nearly 20% from 2009. Another 40,000 removals are also included in the final deportation count but it is unclear where these removals came from.

No Surprise

Analysts say that the fact that President Obama is padding the number of deportations to provide a false picture is nothing new and no surprise.

ICE data going back to 2007 show an increase of deportations of about 27 percent from that year through 2008, from 291,060 to 369,221. By the close of 2009, the first full year of the Obama administration, they rose to 389,834, a mere 5.6 percent increase beyond 2008.

And that trend continued, the data show, with 392,862 in 2010 and 396,906 in 2011, increases of 0.78 percent and 1 percent, without taking into account the phony ATEP additions.

Given that subtracting those numbers leaves a figure of about 360,000 for 2011, according to the committee, the number of deportations actually fell 8.4 percent from 2010 through 2011. For 2012, if the committee’s extrapolation of data prove accurate at about 315,000 deportations for the year, the number will have dropped another 12.5 percent.

They will have dropped 14.7 percent from 2008, the last year of the Bush administration.

As The New American reported two days before the amnesty began, illegals are a tremendous drain on taxpayers. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 26 percent of illegals live in poverty. As well, 47 percent of illegals use welfare, CIS reported. Thirty-nine percent use food assistance and 35 percent use Medicaid.

CIS estimated that the cost of educating illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children is more than $39 billion annually. It also reported that about .6.5 million illegals, 62 percent of the 10.5 million here, do not carry health insurance. They are 14.6 percent of the uninsured population.